Page 1 of Voyeur

Chapter One

Kylie

I wiped the sweat off my brow as I finished hauling in the last big cardboard box from the car. Finally, the heavy lifting was done for the day. Nothing better than a job well done.

My new place in the mountains was close to the border between California and Nevada. The cabin I’d rented was small, but the views were gorgeous, and the rent was cheap because it was so small and isolated.

But isolation was exactly what I needed.

I scraped my coppery hair back into a ponytail, surveying the mess of boxes and random possessions around me. I had only brought what I could fit in my car, which wasn’t much, but it had been a challenge to pack and unload everything all by myself.

I opened a box marked “art supplies” and felt a pang of sadness. Normally the smell of canvas and turpentine filled me with joy and inspiration, but just now it only reminded me that I’d had to give up art school.

It was just a temporary break, I reminded myself. I wasn’t giving it up forever.

The reason I’d quit school and moved to the mountains was because I had a psycho ex. And not in the way that some people talk about their exes, like, “Oh, he commented on my Instagram post from six months ago, what an obsessed psycho, ha ha!” Ben was truly disturbed, and even a restraining order hadn’t kept me safe from him in my old apartment.

I had always known Ben was a little sketchy—he was very secretive, and we’d bickered more than once about how he never liked to show me what he was doing on his phone or online. He had serious authority issues and went out of his way to break any rule he could. At one point, I’d thought his rebellious streak was charming and seductive, but now I saw it for the huge red flag that it was.

Yeah, bad boys weren’t all the fun they were cracked up to be.

Ben had also been obsessed with sex and wanted to do it all the time. I mostly obliged, even though, frankly, Ben was not exactly generous in bed—or in any other aspect, really.

He was also very demanding, asking me to role play very specific scenes, some of which were really kinky, and I didn’t feel comfortable. But I had loved him, and at the time I’d thought love meant doing anything for your partner, so I did it.

“This is how people have sex,” he insisted, after asking me to wear something I didn’t want to wear or telling me to move into a certain position I didn’t like. “Every chick does this. If you won’t do it, I’ll find someone who will.”

I looked over my painting supplies and sighed. I’d fallen for the gaslighting and threats, and now here I was, stuck in a loop of unhappy memories.

Despite his size, Ben could be really scary and intimidating when he wanted to be. I never knew what would set him off. If I so much as touched his laptop, he would fly into a rage, slamming it shut and hissing at me not to touch his things.

But I was only twenty-three, and Ben was my first real boyfriend. He was the first person I said I loved, and I’d thought all of it—the sneaking around, the fighting, and the uncomfortable sex—was normal. I didn’t realize—or didn’t want to realize—that his behavior was sick and abusive.

I could no longer ignore how bad things were when one day, while we were having sex in his bedroom, I’d noticed a tiny red light blinking out from his closet. Alarm bells went off in my head and I immediately pushed Ben off of me.

“What the fuck, Kylie?” he shouted as he tumbled to the floor.

I stormed over to the closet and discovered exactly what I was afraid of—a video camera.

Not only that, but the camera was connected by a cord to his computer, and the video was live streaming to the Internet.

“What the hell is this?” I screamed, ripping the cord from the computer and grabbing the camera. But I could see exactly what it was.

Ben had been selling videos, both live and recorded, of us having sex for our entire relationship—without my knowledge or consent, obviously.

“Babe, it’s not that big of a deal. Tons of chicks do porn. What, you think you’re too good for it or something? Look how many views we have—tons of people are watching! Think of the money we could make!”

“You’re insane! I’m calling the police!” I screamed, while frantically pulling on my clothes.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ben said ominously, grabbing me by the arms, hard. I winced in pain.

“You’re hurting me,” I said.

“I’ll do a lot worse if you tell anybody about this.”

I managed to get out of there, taking the camera along with me. I went straight from Ben’s apartment to the police station and showed them the marks he’d left on my arms and the video camera. I was granted an emergency restraining order right away.

The police also helped me report Ben to his ISP, and we were working on getting all the videos taken down and scrubbed from the Internet.

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